Time is right for prodigal son

LOCAL lad Martin Slattery sounds a little tentative about his first show in the city with his critically-acclaimed new band The Hours. As we travel in a London cab to the band's rehearsal studios in preparation for the tour ahead, he reveals that his departure from the jazz scene in Manchester - where he played for around five years before joining Shaun Ryder's band Black Grape - wasn't well received by his former scenesters.

LOCAL lad Martin Slattery sounds a little tentative about his first show in the city with his critically-acclaimed new band The Hours.

As we travel in a London cab to the band's rehearsal studios in preparation for the tour ahead, he reveals that his departure from the jazz scene in Manchester - where he played for around five years before joining Shaun Ryder's band Black Grape - wasn't well received by his former scenesters.

"Across the road from Band On The Wall, there's a massive billboard and when the Black Grape campaign started a big poster went up right by the side of it with all of us on it," he recalls. "Someone had got a big marker pen and underneath where I was stood had written `Traitor'." Still, the prodigal son must return. And with many more famous names on his CV than when he left the city all those years ago.

This time he's joined by band mate, ace producer and former Pulp member Antony Genn, who he met in 1996 at a recording session for Antony's former flatmate, Robbie Williams. As our taxi rumbles through the capital, discussion of the other greats Martin's played with come thick and fast, all names dropped without arrogance and only to explain what he was doing up to now - the moment he's waited for his whole career.

A multi-instrumentalist capable on guitar, sax, flute, melodica and piano, Martin is a former Mescalero - Joe Strummer's post-Clash outfit.

Diverse

He's shared a studio with Brian Eno and Sly & Robbie, and recorded with artists as diverse as Richard Ashcroft, The Beautiful South, blues man RL Burnside, R&B princess Jamelia and Russell Harty's mortal enemy Grace Jones. More recently, he's played hammond organ for James Morrison and Amy Winehouse, and hooked up with old mucker Jarvis Cocker to add some keys to Cocker's solo debut.

But it was under the tutelage of former Happy Monday's frontman Shaun that Martin got into his best rock 'n' roll scrapes.

"Black Grape had this ragamuffin frontline with this really together band and I think it really worked."

Life in the company of Shaun and Strummer must have been one hell of a ride? "When you're in the middle of it, it all becomes totally normal. Going home was the thing that became surreal."

Back in the present, Martin is preparing to move into the fast lane again.

His band is bending under the weight of praise bestowed upon its debut CD Narcissus Road and recent sell-out shows in London. Sarah Walters

The Hours play the Academy, Oxford Road on Monday at 8pm. Tickets £7 on 275 2930